Vision & Voices

The experimental films for the installation “Visions and Voices”,will be created by rotoscoping each frame of the film “The Passion of Joan of Arc”which contain extensive close-up of Renée Falconetti, those frames are redrawn in an expressive manner, creating an installation composed of multiple projections where the manipulations of the portraits (close-ups) express the complexity and philosophical weight that bridges Renee Falconneti, Joan of Arc, and how symbols, ideas and people are used and exploited.

Sketch of the final video Installation

ProjectThe project “Visions and Voices”. The films for the installations are based on “Renée Jeanne Falconetti”, also known as “Maria Falconetti”, as she is wrongly presented in some texts. Renée Falconetti was an actress, better known to have played the role of Joan of Arcin the silent film “The Passion of Joan of Arc” directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer in 1928.

Through a tortuous relationship, Dreyer manipulated Falconetti in order to obtain the complexity of emotions with tough close-ups, transforming “The Passion of Joan of Arc” into the renowned piece of historical proportions that it is known for today.

There are multiple elements about Falconetti’s life that come to play as a resource for examining the modern tragedy. The installation adopts a critical approach by setting in parallel the life of the French actress who ends up moving to South America to escape the II World War II, as she could find no one to sponsor her visa in the USA.

Falconetti embodies a complex figure that adopted feminist ideals and suffered from mental illness all her life. In 1946, she died in Buenos Aires, allegedly due to a self-imposed restrictive diet while she became increasingly obsessed with mystical beliefs.Falconetti never acted in another film and remains an unknown and complex figure revealed through a legendary cinematic portrayal of Joan of Arc.

The extensive series of close-ups of Falconetti as a representation ofJoan of Arc, merge into a visual manifesto to critique modern social norms and archetypes, the continuous historical proposition of being a public spectacle, yet being vulnerable to being discarded due to fleeting interests of the public.

Joan of Arc carries in her narrative the tradition of heroines as the most explicit and visible manifestations of our aspirations as well as our limitations. Her life provides a poetic narrative about our capacity for transformation within the boundaries of human imagination. But also, the potentiality of the symbolism and narrative to be hijacked; like National Front adopted Joan of Arc as an icon of ultra-nationalism.

The experimental films for the installation “Visions and Voices”,will be created by rotoscoping each frame of the film “The Passion of Joan of Arc”which contain extensive close-up of Renée Falconetti, those frames are redrawn in an expressive manner, creating an installation composed of multiple projections where the manipulations of the portraits (close-ups) express the complexity and philosophical weight that bridges Renee Falconneti, Joan of Arc, and how symbols, ideas and people are used and exploited.

The project has a direct connection to the history of France as well as the through the symbol of Joan of Arc and in that context, the fact that is produced in a residency in France facilitate a critical dialogue in context and the residency provides the time support and critical space to produce this project.